Desert Pond

Category: Work Life Quality

Work life quality and my associated thoughts. Growing technology and the worsening economy and a rising stress level. We should make sure to take time for ourselves. How do we stress less about work and free ourselves more to do the things we like? I don’t have all the answers, but I’ve worked long enough to give you some ideas.

  • Tax Advisers Can Be Wrong, Too

    >Tax Refund Time
    © Chert61|Dreamstime

    As Tax time rolls around we get the same advice every year.”If you get a large refund you are not managing your money well”. You know what? Tax advisers can be wrong, too.

    The mathematicians, the anally focused financial advisers, the tax accountants who are so proud that they can calculate the amount of their taxes to the nearest decimal point all rush to tell the rest of how to manage our money, how to maximize the return on our investment to the nearest nano of a percentage point. Technically, theoretically, as mathematicians they are right, and if you have excess disposable income and are not struggling paycheck to paycheck to make ends meet this argument may apply to you, but this position does not allow for the fact that we are people, we are not all the same and we are not perfect and we react to all the variables of our lives as needed at the moment.

    If you are the bread winner for a growing family and are lucky enough to occasionally earn a small bonus or a commission you will soon learn not to plan on spending that bonus or commission before you receive it, for most of my life every time I earned a bonus or commission on which I had designs, the unexpected occurred, braces for the kids, school books, back to school clothes, a school trip, a broken washing machine or oven, or a need to replace the family car. It was always as if a supreme being were giving me the money because he knew I would need it, and usually it had little to do with what I had planned.

    (more…)

  • Goodbye Corporate Life

    Goodbye Corporate Life
    © Atee83 | Dreamstime

    I’m saying goodbye to the corporate life. Maybe it will turn out to be a mistake. Maybe not. I really hope not, anyway. No matter what, though, I believe my work life quality is about to change significantly for the better.

    I quit my job – a very nice, corporate job at a well-recognized and ages old organization with benefits and a corner office.

    Some will think me crazy for doing so and the intent of this post is not to ask whether or not I should have done so. It’s to explain why I did so.

    I’ve played the game. I’ve crawled my way through corporate politics. I’ve sandwiched my share of constructive criticism in between bits of positive reinforcement. I’ve been the mouse whose cheese was moved and I’ve moved my share of cheese. I know how to manage in a minute, remotely, and in the middle of the night. I know being in the red is bad. I’ve worked with empire-builders, lazy suck-ups and those who did all the work but never got enough credit.  I’ve been through more corporate fire-drills than a volunteer fireman.

    (more…)

  • Meetings – Leave the Sticks at Home

    Yesterday afternoon, I jumped on my fifth conference call of the day with two hours left to go. Five hours so far that my ear had been glued to the phone. Well, actually, I use a speaker phone, but you know what I mean. One benefit of using a speakerphone is that it leaves your hands free to do email and other work while on a call. However, it’s also difficult to pay attention to the call if you’re doing other work. A
    conundrum.

    (more…)

  • Informal Mentoring

    Many companies have formal mentoring programs today. The best and the brightest are selected and paired with a more senior, experienced employee in order to help the junior employee grow within the organization. My feeling is that this is exactly where companies miss a huge opportunity to add to their bottom line. In focusing only on the best and the brightest, those with the most growing to do get left behind.

    (more…)

  • Meetings and Why I Hate Them

    I like to work. It’s not working that I don’t like and the biggest reason why I sometimes question the quality of my work life is meetings. Yes. Hate them. Most of them, anyway. I participate in a LOT of meetings – in person, by phone, all day meetings, staff meetings, project meetings – you name it. In fact, because I’m a number’s geek, I’ve calculated it out and I’ve attended approximately 12,000 hours of meetings in the past 10 years. I’m including only meetings where the number of attendees was more than three. Three and under, I figure, is really just a discussion. Here are, in no particular order, the top 10 reasons I hate meetings:

    (more…)